The Problem

If you’ve landed on this page it’s probably because you’ve been bombarded with junk email from a NetFlip.co.uk newsletter.

Chances are you *did* genuinely sign up for something once – perhaps as part of an offer by another company. I’m not going to allege that email addresses accidentally find their way onto Submission Technology’s databases. What seems clear is that once they’re on the database it’s very hard to remove them.

You’ve probably already discovered that clicking on the “unsubscribe” link on each email message does nothing at all. It certainly doesn’t completely remove your email address from their databases, but it doesn’t even remove your address from that particular campaign.

In the past few months things got worse. Not only did I receive several different messages per day from newsletter@netflip.co.uk, but I received multiple copies of the same message. I’ve no idea why, but it was annoying.

Why Bother?

Life is short, it’s true, and some have suggested simply filtering the messages to a junk or bin and forgetting about them.

The trouble is, I work on “principle”. In a world of unlimited broadband, I can’t really argue that they’re stealing my bandwidth — the messages are fairly small and don’t take long to download — although occasionally when I’ve tried to check my messages on a very slow mobile connection, I certainly discover how irritating unsolicited messages are.

There’s a possible issue of privacy, particularly when we seem to be dealing with a company that doesn’t honour requests. It makes little difference to me whether this is a deliberate management decision or simply poorly configured technology — if they can’t get these basics right, what confidence can I have that they’re managing my data responsibly?

The Solution

Disclaimer: I can’t guarantee that the following solution will work for you. You implement this at your own risk, and you shall not hold me liable for any trouble you might get into with Submission Technology, their agents, the police, or anyone else who might take issue with this. There is a slim possibility that you could get into trouble under some section of a communication or electronic communication act/law, as it could constitute harassment. Proceed at your own risk.

Here goes:

1. Gather together email addresses for key staff at Submission Technology (the company that owns and maintains the Netflip.co.uk domain and services).

The easiest way to do that is to visit www.submissiontechnology.co.uk, click on one of the options under the “What We Do” menu, then find the contacts listed on each page linked from the left-hand menu.

Put them in a nice comma separated list (i.e. name1@blah.com, name2@blah.com)

2. In your email software set up a filter or rule. As there are so many email clients, I can’t tell you how to do that for your particular software, but it’s usually fairly easy.

Have the rule look out for any incoming mail that comes from “newsletter@netflip.co.uk”. For now at least, this is where all the spam marketing messages come from (small mercies).

For each match, have your email client forward or redirect (your choice) the message to all of the email addresses you collected earlier. If you can only forward to one address, pick one you fancy. You might want to pick on CEO Neil Durrant. I’ll let you discover his email address yourself (hint: market research).

You’ll need to set up add your own message otherwise it’s a fairly pointless exercise and the ST guys may not take the hint. You can usually append a message to the original before it’s forwarded. I used this:

Hello,

As you have refused to acknowledge my unsubscribe requests and other attempts at contact, you are now being automatically forwarded every piece of (spam) email your NetFlip.co.uk service is sending me.

Annoying isn’t it?

I’ve been receiving multiple copies of multiple messages for well over six months now.

I suggest you work out how to remove all instances of [your email address] from your databases!

Please do not reply to this message. It will be ignored.

Use this, or your own similarly creative message. There’s no call to be threatening (that could really get you into trouble). Do change the [your email address] bit to the email address you’re receiving their spam on.

If you can execute more than one action for each filter, you might also want to move the message to the trash/bin/junk folder so you don’t even have to see it (unless you want the satisfaction of counting how much junk you’ve just sent to the guys who created it)

3. Sit back and wait.

If all goes according to plan you should quickly find those messages disappear. Mine stopped after just two days (at least, I think they’ve stopped).

To Neil Durrant and Submission Technology

Please fix your systems and implement best practices in managing marketing mailing lists. There is no advantage in sending email to people who don’t want it. Please act like a responsible, reputable company. Honour ‘unsubscribe’ requests and there’ll be no need for direct action.

To EConsultancy

I suppose the comments I left on your interview with Neil Durrant were an embarrassment to you and/or your industry as you saw fit to continually censor them.

The fact is, a company in your sector is acting unethically and direct action appears to be the only way of sorting things out. By removing my comments you appear to be condoning their actions.

Future Vigilance

Prevention is better than cure, and you need to try to avoid ‘reinfection’. It can be quite hard to find out what service a company may be using for its mailing list.

Take a look at the front page of netflip.co.uk (no link love for you) and you’ll see:

NetFlip.co.uk is Submission Technology’s mailing service, used by sites like:

FreebieGB
Cashback.co.uk
GreasyPalm
Tiscali Cashback
SomeoneWillWin
Free DVD Nights
The Sun Cashback
News of the World Cashback
GMTV Cashback
SmartSpend

Obviously this list isn’t updated very often because it’s still listing sites like the News of the World. However, given that Submission Technology’s main business appears to be ‘cashback’ sites, you should be extra vigilant if you decide to sign up for those sites.

Be warned that you may automatically be signed up for a newsletter even if you simply register with the site. While I don’t want to suggest that all associated companies are unethical, they may not be aware that Submission Technology is abusing their members by spamming them.

Contacting Other Companies

If you’ve really got the bit between your teeth, you may wish to contact some of the legitimate companies that are being advertised via Netflip/Submission Technology. Bear in mind that much of this marketing spam comes from affiliates not related to the original company, so this could have limited, if any, effect.

For example, I contacted both Optical Express and Nielsen UK — two companies advertised via Netflip emails — to let them know that their services were being spammed in this way. I haven’t heard back from them, and sadly they probably have little power to act. Netflip/ST seem to use affiliates and tend to aggregate these cashback offers, so they don’t have a direct relationship with the original companies.

Did it work for you?

Let me know if this worked for you, or if you have found another method of removing yourself from this pesky marketer’s email lists.

Resources

• Ben Park has written about Submission Technology / Netflip and Spam which details how he attempted to get Netflip emails to stop.
• It may be worth reporting Submission Technology to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for breach of the Data Protection Act in relation to direct marketing.